JOE WALLACE: I'm Joe Wallace for Gearwire.Com. We're at Musikmesse in Frankfurt, and I'm here with Pascal Joguet from JazzMutant, and you're here to talk to us about Dexter. Tell me a little bit about Dexter.

PASCAL JOGUET: Ah, so Dexter is the brand new product. We'll just preview it at Musikmesse this year, so the project is not available in the market now but will be available probably in May or June. So, the idea of this project is to control DAW software, so Cubase, Sonar, Logic Pro, Pyramix. All these different software have so complex interfaces that you need a controller, a really smart way to control all the parameters. So, the goal of the Dexter is really to focus on the work and no more on the navigation system, which is a nightmare in other controllers I mean and also with the mouse because you already need to show a plugin and then you want access to another track and so you want to set the plugin of the other track so you have to close this window and open another one. That's really a nightmare, so really the goal of the Dexter is access directly to the parameter you want to change or edit.

JOE WALLACE: Now, can DJs benefit from this technology as well or is this more of a studio production type of application?

PASCAL JOGUET: So, the Dexter is really dedicated to studio use, but for DJs and for live performance, we have another project which is called Lemur which allows you to whatever you want with your end on the screen. So, for the DJs and live performance, you use the Lemur, and for the studio you use the Dexter.

JOE WALLACE: Well thank you very much. We're going to ge a demonstration of Dexter, and we'll have a look at the control surface and how it interfaces with programs like Cubase and Digital Performer and Sonar, so let's have a look.

PASCAL JOGUET: So, Dexter works with Cubase in a really unprecedented compatibility and unprecedented communication between software and hardware. So, we work really close with different companies to be able to access the depth of the software side, so you can really forget the screen and focus on the Dexter screen.

JOE WALLACE: How does it work?

PASCAL JOGUET: So, basically here is the mixer over here, really classic. The idea is to have, of course, eight tracks at once, and to access all the tracks with bank -- to the other banks directly, so I push this button and access, and I drag my finger and just access to the different tracks, so if I want to work on the guitar, I just do this and you have the guitar, okay? And so, of course we can solo tracks. You can go deeper in one particular track. So, if you want, for instance, work on the snare, which is this track, click just on the EK, and here you have access to the channel of the DAW. So, the EQ, the effects, and the surround panner, and of course the level, the sends to busses, etc. So, you can go also deeper in each different parameter. I mean here you can access the EQ, okay, so you just draw the EQ curve with your fingers, which is a really smart way to work, and you can go on a bigger view of it if you want more precision and more comfort, more comfortable display. So, as you can see on the software, we really have the first ever graphical EQ you can use with your fingers, and because we use a unique multitouch sensor technology on this, you can move several parameters at once. Okay, another great thing that you can access directly under the track without going back to the mixer and to go back to the other track, here you have the name of the other track so let's go to the kick, just click it, and on the display you show the EQ curve, okay, and of course with it you can also access all the tracks directly and edit the new curve like that. Well, that's really the fastest way to work with DAW systems. Let's go back to the channel here. Here is the effects control. On this track, on the snare track, we have a compressor, and you have a two-dimensional controller to edit but you can also go to a larger view for the plugins, and here you have a list of the different plugins you have on this track, and because you know plugins sometimes have so much parameters on one plugin, you can here, just by dragging you finger on the screen, you can just access all the parameters. And of course, you can go back to another track directly without going through those nightmare navigation buttons. Okay, and another nice feature is the surround panner. To control surround today, you can do it with the mouse, which is may be the best way to do it, or maybe you can buy a really big, big console but there is no way to do it really smart -- in a really smart way with today's controller. With the Dexter, you can move the sound around the space like that, and you can access also to a bigger which with other tracks and just move the sound on the space with your finger. You can so rotate the old scene, okay, or do this kind of thing, okay? So here you select the tracks you want to see on the screen and the one you want to hide, okay? And the last nice feature is the problem with this controller is that sometimes you want to be really precise in control. I mean because when you're working on a mix, you need precision with the faders, so here you have three different presses of zooming the faders. I can zoom into the fader to have more precise control. You can see it in the -- you see, and I can also do much more accurate control on it. So, there is no way to do it in the hardware side, so with the Dexter you can now have more precision than other controllers on the market.